PERFORMA AND LAFAYETTE ANTICIPATION: A PIONEERING PARTNERSHIP

For twelve days—from November 4 to 15, 2015—Paris foundation Lafayette Anticipation is united with Performa 15, the sixth visual art performance biennial, and sets up headquarters in New York at the Performa Hub and other venues across the city. It was clear from the beginning that the foundation, created in 2013 by Guillaume Houzé, would look abroad to shape its program, and Performa emerged as a natural peer and partner. Both organizations are driven by the same profound commitment to artists—mentoring and supporting them at every step in their process to deliver visionary, cutting-edge works. Indeed, commissioning and producing are key words connecting our two organizations. We both believe in giving artists full confidence—“100% risk, 100% trust” is Performa’s unofficial mantra—and it is hand in hand with the artist that we premiere each new work.

A strong artistic bridge also connected us. We shared working relationships and friendships with terrific artists such as Ulla von Brandenburg, Simon Fujiwara, and Alexandre Singh, and we realized that, even without planning it, we had already collaborated on British artist Cally Spooner’s irresistible “conceptual” musical And You Were Wonderful, on Stage. Presented during Performa 13 at the National Academy Museum, Spooner’s work matured into a full film production shortly afterwards, thanks to the invaluable residency that Lafayette Anticipation provided for the artist in Paris that same year. Having already co-produced one work, we were eager for more. Through our ongoing conversations, we agreed that we are looking in the same direction—challenging our understanding of what a flexible cultural institution, exhibition space, and educational hub of the future can be.

Over time we built our exciting program for Performa 15, creating a transatlantic bond with an important group of artists including Ulla von Brandenburg, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Volmir Cordeiro, Simon Fujiwara, Christodoulos Panayiotou, and Erika Vogt—six singular voices that come together under the joint Performa and Lafayette Anticipation banner. This pioneering partnership is designed to extend through 2016 to the next Performa biennial in 2017, adding innovative and exciting new material to our programs in New York and Paris, with Charles Aubin, associate curator for both of our organizations.

Ulla von Brandenburg’s ongoing exploration of the rituals of the Saint-Simonians, a 19th century cult often cited as the origin of early French socialism, culminates here in an atmospheric B&W video-installation.

Paris-based foundation Lafayette Anticipation sets up headquarters at the Performa Hub to present recent projects and collaborations, including Simon Fujiwara’s film New Pompidou and Christodoulos Panayiotou’s lecture-performance Dying on Stage.

In an “in-between” space where roles and identities resist simplifications, Erika Vogt brings together a group of LA-based artists to treat the stage as a site for a time-based exhibition that plays with the mechanics of the theater.